


Shed Your Shadow, Watch it Rise

by Bus_Kids_Burgade (Inthemorninglight)



Series: Never Have to Carry More than You Can Hold [3]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Coming to terms with Bakshi, PTSD Jemma, Post-Episode: s02e19 The Dirty Half Dozen, Some internalizes self-hatred, learning self-love, mama may, things are not black-and-white
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-27
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-08-11 07:57:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7883041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inthemorninglight/pseuds/Bus_Kids_Burgade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“People are going to tell you your anger is ugly. Screw them. They don’t get to decide that. They'll tell you there's something wrong with you. There is nothing. Wrong. With. You."</p><p>...<br/>Post 2x19. Jemma tells May about Bakshi.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shed Your Shadow, Watch it Rise

**Author's Note:**

> I just can't even handle the way this story line is just dropped? Like is Fitz's condemnation supposed to be the resolution? I can never write enough fix-its for s2 tbh. Anyway....

_...You really have changed, Simmons. I’m disappointed….. _

_...You know what the scariest change is, Jemma? It’s you _ …..

 

Their voices mingle in her head, the words overlapping nauseatingly. She can see them both, Ward and Fitz, shoulder-to-shoulder, looking at her with the same disappointment and shame and embarrassment in their faces, and she doesn’t know which is worse - their words or the fact that their words are the same. 

 

She wants to be angry. Because she is  _ right _ . She is  _ right  _ to want Ward dead. She is right to try to kill him. She knows it with all of her body, feels it deep, will never apologize for it. But the way Fitz looked at her today when she said it out loud… it makes her want to crawl into the dark cave of her own mind and never come out, makes her think longingly again of the cold bottom of the ocean and that maybe it would have been better if this person she’s become had never crawled its way out. 

 

She’s still holding the gun May slid into her hands, and the storm surges under her skin before she can bridle it. With a cry that comes deep from her throat she fires four shots into the bathroom mirror, pummeling her own stark reflection into glittering dust and cracking the tiles behind it. 

 

The world blurs and smears around her, growing too bright. It takes her too long to realize she isn’t alone in the small bathroom anymore.

 

“What the hell happened?” May’s demanding, pulling the gun out of her hands with deft fingers. 

 

Jemma struggles for breath to explain. 

 

“Bakshi…” she gasps. “Bakshi….”

 

And it all comes spilling out, a poison she has to let from her veins. She sees him crumbling to dust a hundred times in the seconds it takes to tell May what she’d done. 

 

“I killed him. I killed him.” She says it again and again. Her fingers have gone numb. There are black spots in her vision.  _ Shock _ , she thinks.  _ I’m going into shock _ . 

 

May’s angry disapproval over the mirror has smoothed into concern and something else. Something sadder. The gun is gone. Her hands are on Jemma’s elbows, guiding her to sit down on the edge of the tub, rubbing vigorously up and down her arms. 

 

Nausea sweeps through her and Jemma twists away to retch in the nearby toilet. WIthout a word, May gathers her hair out of the way for her, keeping a steady, comforting  pressure on her back as she chokes and gags. 

 

When she’s through, when she’s started to calm down a little, May catches her gaze and says firmly, “Bakshi was dangerous, and he needed to be eliminated. You’ve got nothing to feel guilty about.” 

 

It doesn’t seem possible, but Jemma feels even smaller and uglier than she had a moment before. 

 

“I wasn’t trying to kill  _ him _ ,” she admits, pours the sin out before May can go any further. “It was for Ward. It was for Ward and I’m going to keep trying.” 

 

She’s gasping again, rocking forward and back and twisting her fingers together frantically, waiting for that same look to cloud May’s expression. 

 

But it doesn’t. May looks surprised, but only for half a second. Instead of shame, instead of judgment, Jemma sees a flicker of pride there. This calms her more than anything. 

 

“Fitz,” she says and has to stop for breath. She has to say it, has to bleed this deepest hurt on someone before it fills up her own lungs. “Fitz - he thinks I’m a monster.” 

 

May’s face hardens. “What did he say to you?”

 

“That the scariest change is me,” Jemma whispers, the words spiralling off her lips in a rush.

 

“Don’t listen to him,” May tells her and there are sparks of her familiar anger, her voice like flint. 

 

May closes her eyes, pulls in a deep breath before she looks back at Jemma. There is definitely something sorrowful behind her guarded expression, but her nails bite into Jemma’s knees through her leggings, implore her to listen. 

 

“The world doesn’t like women who aren’t soft and happy,” she says. “People, men especially, are going to tell you your anger is ugly. Screw them. They don’t get to decide that. They’ll say your feral. They’ll say there’s something wrong with you. There. Is. Nothing. Wrong. With. You.”

 

Something blazes in May’s face as she says it.

 

“It’s possible to  _ want  _ to do things for the wrong reasons, and still do them for the right ones,” she goes on. “Listen to me Simmons - Jemma. There are people in this world who are dangerous. And those same people who tell you you are ugly or scary or wrong - especially the men - would let those dangerous people hurt and  _ kill _ before they would tarnish their own good names by ending them. 

 

“Do you know how much blood I have on my hands so Coulson can keep his nice white shirts clean? I do it because someone has to and he won’t. It’s his weakness, not mine. And not yours either. Your willingness to take Ward out makes you brave. Fitz will sleep at night because he didn’t have to be the one to cross that line and Ward won’t hurt anyone else. 

 

“Fuck anyone who has something bad to say about you because of that.” 

 

It’s the most Jemma has ever heard May speak. The words fill her up, each one making it easier for her to breathe. 

 

She is not ugly.

 

She is not warped. 

 

She is not wrong. 

 

She’s like May. 

 

May moves her hands to Jemma’s shoulders again, squeezes once. Then she steps back, waits for Jemma to pull herself up on shaking legs on her own. But she isn’t far. 

 

As she stands, Jemma catches sight of herself in the shards of mirror littering the tiles. Her face is split into a thousand jagged pieces, unrecognizable fragments that will never fit back together into the whole they used to be. 

 

That doesn’t make the new face ugly. That doesn’t make it bad. She will have to keep telling herself this until she  _ feels  _ it instead of just  _ knowing  _ it. 

 

She turns the lights out on the mess and follows May out of the bathroom. 

 


End file.
